Recovery
by StrangerToAll
Summary: In post-rebellion Panem, some people have moved on more easily than others. For Johanna Mason and Cressida, the struggle of continuing a normal life is very much real and threatens their well-being every day. Their coping mechanisms involve a sickly array of vices, from drugs to violence, sex to alcohol. Do people who are so broken deserve a happy ending?


Cressida stood bare in the bathroom, gripping the edges of the ceramic sink, her slouching form presented in the mirror before her. Dubiously, her eyes roamed the figure in the mirror. Her hair was growing back on the shaven side; small tufts of blonde making the precise tattooing beneath seem blurry. The deep green vines looked haphazard as they spiralled around the back of her ear; sprouting from the sandy masses of fluffy hair, like marram grass from a dune. She knew she needed to shave the hair again - she hated it so unkempt - only she never found the time.

"Sweetheart, the shower is ready" Cressida called through the wooden door which was firmly shut, providing a steadfast separation from her traumatised partner. She got no response. Figuring that perhaps her somewhat weak voice simply didn't project enough, she attempted again. Yet, no reply. She knew Johanna was there - she could hear her infrequent footsteps and the occasional gentle thud of her back resting against the closed door. Johanna was simply being stubborn.

Adverting her attention back to herself, Cressida followed the vines. She watched them flow down her neck to her chest, where they seemed now to contour her collar bones to an extent of making her look sickly. She knew she'd lost weight since the rebellion. Whilst Katniss and Peeta ran off and began their perfect life of self-inflicted isolation, others carried the life-long, painful burdens for them. She and Johanna were indifferent. Cressida knew Johanna struggled more than her, and rightfully so. Johanna had been physically tortured for weeks on end whereas the only scars Cressida had to bear were the psychological ones that haunted her every day. Johanna had been used to suffering (as much as that fact hurt Cressida), but she had not. Being on the frontline of an iconic war and watching friends die before her very own eyes was not something that training as a movie director had prepared Cressida for and she still endured the pain of what she witnessed every day.

What many do not know is that the vines continue to trail down her torso. They gently caress the underside of her small left breast before whirling over her ribs which were becoming grotesquely prominent. The vines only cease at the end of her Apollo's belt. The final bud of the vines rests just at the crevice of her thigh, dangerously near to her womanhood. Surprisingly, nobody had ever asked why she chose to get these tattoos. Only Johanna had heard the story one night, when Cressida was desperately filling through her brain for a discussion topic to forestall another of Johanna's breakdowns. The simple reason was this: vines climb higher than people ever expect plants to climb. Once, Cressida saw this as a metaphor for herself, a simple Capitol citizen, rising higher than anyone could ever expect. Now she laughs bitterly when she thinks about this.

"Johanna, you can't stay out there forever" the blonde woman announced, forcing herself to turn away from the mirror to watch the door expectantly instead. There was a childish whine from the reverse side of the door which caused a small smile to tug at the corners of Cressida's lips. "I followed your instructions exactly: I came in here, opened the blinds so you can see the sky, let the water run for a while so it's warm and stripped every bit of clothing from my body. Still not satisfied?" she quipped. There was an accidental bitterness to her tone, and she could physically feel the other woman wince on the other side of the door.

Like a dog coming to heel, Johanna weakly turned the door handle and slipped inside of the steamy room. As soon as the door fit back into the frame, Johanna was backed against it with her eyes fixated on Cressida. Their gaze was hard, long and seemed unyielding until Johanna finally broke eye contact and allowed her hazel eyes to travel down Cressida's body. The unknotting of the tension in the brunette's shoulders was palpable as she drank in the sight of Cressida standing naked before her. Her timid and fearful eyes grew lustful and hungry as she pushed herself away from the safe haven of the door and enveloped Cressida into her arms.

It only took a couple of searing kisses to relax Johanna enough for Cressida to strip her of her clothes. Soon enough, the two women were stood before one another, naked from head to toe. Johanna's body was as sickly as her own, if not more so. Johanna rarely ate a full meal and majority of her liquid intake consisted of alcoholic beverages which corroded her body into a thin, deteriorated state. Despite this, her hair was still silken and healthy beneath Cressida's fingers. The blonde gently caressed over the short locks that had grown back from Johanna's bald scalp over the course of the six months and was the first to break the silence by whispering adoring comments of her awe for Johanna's beauty.

However, luring Johanna into the shower was always a difficult state of affairs. She would always put up a good fight- thrashing, screaming and cursing against Cressida as panic flurried through her at the mere sight of the spray of the shower. Once she was beneath the water, Cressida could not dare to take her hands off of Johanna's body. If Johanna was to lose contact with Cressida she would be overridden with trauma which always ended regrettably. Countless times Cressida had found herself on the shower floor with Johanna cradled in her arms, enfeebled and sobbing.

Their successful showers always went the same way. Johanna would join Cressida beneath the water after around ten minutes of hesitation. Once she was effectively in the shower, Cressida would wash Johanna's body and hair then hold her as she began to get frightened. Eventually, they'd make love. As much as Cressida did the last step out of wanton, she was also attempting to classically condition her lover into developing a better relationship with the water. At the end of every shower, Johanna would be backed against the crisp tiles of the bathroom with water running freely over her face - trickling down her parted lips and racing down the curvature of her throat to be met by Cressida's eager mouth as her hand worked hungrily between Johanna's thighs. As promising as this seems at the time, no matter how many times they eloped like this, Johanna's fear for the water never faltered.

Their shower today was no different.

Once they were finished with their daily shower routine, Cressida helped Johanna from the shower and wrapped her in the warmth of a linen towel. She dried her before considering herself, but Johanna stayed and watched when Cressida began dabbing her own body with a towel, eventually wrapping it around her torso and securing it in place. This evening there was an uncomfortable suspense in the air. Cressida knew that Johanna had something to say but was stalling away from ever admitting whatever it was on her mind. That was until Cressida reached for the bathroom door.

"Look, Cressida" she began quietly, eyes glued to the ground nervously, "I don't think this is work-"

The phone rang. With her heart hammering relentlessly in her chest, Cressida excused herself and hurried from the bathroom, jogging down the stairs to the phone in the hallway which she picked up instantly to escape the end of Johanna's sentence.

"Hello?" she asked, trying her utmost hardest to sound alright. The voice that replied to her was a familiar voice, a voice that eased her frantic heart a little. It was Katniss. Katniss often called to check on them - she worried mostly about Johanna's health but Cressida knew the woman had a little care for her too. Cressida was struggling to focus as a multitude of thoughts cascaded her mind, but she managed to register Katniss' small talk.

"We're alright" Cressida lied blatantly. Every time Katniss called she told her the same lie. "I just managed to get her to shower. She's been better lately."

"Really? How did you get her to do that? She stunk like a mutt when we shared a room and every time I told her to shower she'd spit at me" Katniss mused on the other end of the line. She sounded so calm and content in life. Cressida never imagined hearing the Mockingjay sound this way.

"She still tries to do that, she hasn't changed that much" Cressida replied, managing a small chuckle to maintain her gleeful façade. "But you don't want to know how I get her into the shower. It's much too vulgar for your innocent mind, Mockingjay." There was laughter on the other end of the line which elicited a small breath of relief from Cressida. Her act was being believed.

Their small talk continued for a short period of time until Katniss' tone hardened, growing serious.

"Anyway, I called to tell you guys something. You'll have to tell Jo for me, yeah? See, Peeta and I got engaged!"

Blatantly, Cressida didn't care. She was sick of everyone around her being able to move on in their lives and find happiness whilst she and Johanna struggled to simply stay alive every day. She didn't understand how Katniss and Peeta's relationship could be so easy, with Peeta being as tormented as Johanna and Katniss baring an endless baggage of psychological scars. Cressida had a burning jealousy for how they effortlessly moved on and surrendered themselves to loving one another. She loved Johanna, that she was certain of, but right now her broken lover was contemplating ending their relationship again.

Their relationship had always been a mess. It was an arbitrary engagement that always ended in hurting one another or themselves. They first indulged in one another around two weeks after the assassination of Coin and Snow, when all the funerals began to occur consecutively. Cressida had been seated beside Johanna at Finnick's funeral when Johanna had begun to break down. The brunette screamed as the coffin disappeared behind velvet curtains and Cressida had been the one to hold the bawling girl back and escort her out of the room to comfort her. The two women shared a cigarette and spoke for hours in the brisk winter air. It was a conversation that ended with their first kiss. Things moved quickly after that. Only two vices could stop the pain for Johanna - alcohol and sex, and Cressida had become Johanna's source for the latter. Somehow, the two fell in love amidst their belligerent sexual relationship. Yet this never brought end to the disorder, violence and hurt.

"Cressida, are you there?"

The blonde flinched as she heard Katniss' voice echo down the phone again. She sighed softly and plastered fake joy over her words as she congratulated Katniss on her engagement. Thankfully, it seemed that this was all Katniss wanted to hear as she quickly excused herself from their phone call soon after and left Cressida alone in the tense silence of the hall. Cressida closed her heavy eyelids for a moment to calm her racing heart only to snap them open again moments later as she heard Johanna move languidly from the bathroom to their bedroom. Carefully, Cressida placed the phone down and crept up the stairs, attempting to collect herself with every step. She knew exactly where Johanna's sentence was going before the phone rang, and she knew exactly what her response would be. Cressida quickened her pace up the stairs before reaching the bedroom, slamming the door open.

Johanna was sat on the bed in a meagre, loose fitting vest and shorts. She looked unbelievably frail, but this didn't stop Cressida from storming across the room and pushing Johanna forcefully down onto the bed.

"What were you going to fucking say?" Cressida hissed as Johanna's eyes grow wild with shock. " _I don't think this is working out._ Is that it? You want to give up on us? Cower out of our relationship because everything isn't going smoothly? Of course it isn't going smoothly! You're fucked up, Johanna! And so am I. We're fucked up together." She shouted, chest heaving as Johanna looked up at her with frenzied eyes. "Sometimes, when I'm trying to help you, you get scared and hit me. How do I respond to that? I smack you to wake you the fuck up. You get drunk almost every night and when I tell you to stop you throw bottles at me. So, I fight you off me. In fact, most of the time it ends up with my hand between your thighs. If anyone else saw this, they'd call the cops." Cressida hissed through gritted teeth.

She paused for breath, a slight pant breaking the silence between her and the trembling woman beneath her. Cressida felt the shaking against the bed and let out a sour laugh, her tone softening. She took one look at her vulnerable girlfriend and closed her eyes to hide the image, resting their foreheads together gently. "That's why we have to stay together, Jo. You can't give up on this. We're the only people who understand one another. If you were to go off and find another woman or another guy and you hit them, you'd kick you out of their house in a heartbeat. I'd never do that. I couldn't. We're fucked up but I love you, Johanna."

There was a long silence that followed. Johanna simply remained beneath Cressida with her eyes wild, desperately filing through her mind to formulate a response. Cressida knew her lover took a while to process events and thoughts, so she waited patiently atop of her, fighting off the urge to let her eyes trail down Johanna's naked form.

"I-" Johanna stuttered, licking her dry lips before continuing, "I hurt you, Cress."

Cressida simply raised an eyebrow in question, a small gesture of her head asking Johanna what she could possibly mean by that.

"You said it yourself. I hit you, throw shit at you. I could have seriously hurt you by now. I worry we aren't working because I'm so dangerous, not because I don't love you. I do love you, but I see how much this is killing you every day. Do you think I don't know about your drug stash? Do you think I don't feel you sobbing at night when you think I'm asleep next to you?"

Cressida's jaw fell slightly. It was her turn to stutter on a response.

"I- I – no. You don't understand. It's not you. I was a user long before we ever met, you didn't do that to me. And yes, yes I cry myself to sleep almost every night. Of course, I do. Everyone I grew up with is dead. Everyone I loved is dead. Besides you. You're the only reason I'm still even here on this horrid planet" she retaliated, which widened Johanna's eyes with surprise.

Another silence hung over the women who simply gazed deeply into one another's eyes. Eventually, the dripping of water from Cressida's wet hair onto Johanna's bare chest snapped the brunette from her trance. In response, Johanna simply reached up around Cressida's neck and pulled her close, enveloping her into a tight embrace that Cressida melted into instantly, needing the warmth of her lover.

"I'm sorry, Cress. I'm sorry everything is still so fucking hard. It won't be like this forever; we can get better. And we will. We will be so much better. We will have a perfect relationship like - Katniss and Peeta! The media will be calling us the celebrity couple of the decade instead" Johanna chuckled weakly, eliciting the same teary noise from her girlfriend.

"You're right" Cressida agreed firmly, pulling back to look down into the eyes she fell so deeply in love with six months prior, "they're getting married you know? For real this time. It was Katniss on the phone just."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Fuck 'em."

With a laugh, the couple rolled over in bed and manoeuvred to get comfortable, laying in a content embrace to the sound of the birds cheeping outside. In the content silence, a question wracked Cressida's mind, impulsively threatening to escape her mouth.

And it did.

"Will you marry me?"


End file.
